Post-graduate palliative care training in Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe and Central Asia: publication of quantitative research findings

Between April and September 2018, the Head of Academy embarked on a research expedition in the WHO regions of Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The data gathered as part of the research in the form of questionnaires and interviews was analysed from a quantitative and qualitative perspective. The quantitative part will soon be published in Palliative Medicine in Practice, with an online version already released in advance. The (more extensive) qualitative part will also be published as a research report at a later date.

The findings shows that there is high demand for post-graduate training in general and, in particular, for a planned “core curriculum”. One-third of the countries visited do not yet offer any post-graduate training. What’s more, more than 90% of experts believe that a multidisciplinary core curriculum would help promote palliative care training in their region or country.

There are a number of barriers to palliative training; the most frequent issues are listed in the table below. Key problems include a lack of political interest, limited healthcare infrastructure and the absence of curricula.

The full research report is available here: whocc.pmu.ac.at/toolkit. There you will also find an overview of a one-week multidisciplinary specialist training course in Ivano-Frankivsk (western Ukraine), which was organised together with the WHO Collaborating Center in Salzburg.

 

 

Figure: Expert opinion on the main barriers to developing palliative care in their countries
(n = 27, multiple responses possible).

 

 

 

 

Photos from Baku, Athens, Dushanbe und Minisk during the project trip in 2018